


What We Take with Us

by MossPiglet



Category: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, I named the dragonfly, Jamack and Kipo bonding, Jamack is part of the pack, Jamack reminiscing about the life he's left behind, Mod Frog culture, Mod Frogs, Season/Series 01 Spoilers, the mod frogs are repressed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23764411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MossPiglet/pseuds/MossPiglet
Summary: Kipo and her pack have to flee the city to regroup after the Second Clover debacle, joined by Jamack who hadn't gotten far enough away from the situation to avoid being dragged back in. While everyone rests and recovers, Jamack and Kipo have a discussion about Mod Frog society and Jamack thinks over what his life was and what it will be now.
Comments: 24
Kudos: 173





	What We Take with Us

Jamack had always liked the spring best of all. Well, actually most of the Mod Frogs liked the spring the best of any season. It was natural they would, spring was the season when they would have their tadpoles and when the tadpoles that were a few years old, and who had been flopping around with nubby little arms and legs, would finally start to emerge from their nursery pond. But most Mod Frogs would never tell you that they liked the spring, they would never dignify a question like “what is your favorite season?” with a response. But Jamack did, and that type of behavior had always been part of his problem.

Worse still, Jamack could _explain_ why he liked spring, which was just obscene. He could go on and on about how he liked the way the cherry trees bloomed like an explosion and the way the clouds turned peachy pink in the afternoon and the way the grass would stay cool even when the sun was shining. To be able to go on and on about all his little emotions and the things he noticed in the world that weren’t even related to a score or ranking up? Why would a frog ever expose themselves like that? But of course, knowing when to shut up had never been his strong suit.

Kipo was even worse on that front, and it drove Jamack up the wall. The burrow girl could never stop saying whatever was in her head at the time- though even more offensively she still hadn’t broken her promise to keep his secret, and who did that? She could embarrass him whenever she wanted to, make all her friends laugh at him even more than they already did, but she didn’t. And Jamack knew she wouldn’t. And he _hated_ it, because where did that put him? She had something on him, and she wasn’t going to use it, but he was still left there knowing that she knew his weakness. If another Mod Frog knew his weakness he’d be back in a mega bunny warren already and probably never get out.

Squatting on a log over the edge of the pond- not the Mod Frogs’ pond, he’d probably never get to see his birth-pond again and he told himself he was coming to terms with that- he shuddered at the thought of mega bunny fur against his skin. He and the kids had ended up well outside the city limits on their journey, but his dragonfly needed to rest and this seemed like a safe place to do so. There were other dragonflies out here, and his favorite one that he’d stolen from the Mod Frogs had gone off to hunt with them after a few hours’ sleep. He couldn’t see them anymore, but Hawker would come back eventually, he trusted him. He just needed some time away from the humans probably.

Jamack could here Kipo coming up behind him well before she cleared the edge of the trees. The kid was never quiet, not by mute standards anyway, but now that they were so far from the city and all the dangers they had been used to over the past few days, she was getting especially loud and careless. The little intense one- okay, yes Jamack knew she was called Wolf, but that wasn’t any kind of _real_ name, and whatever, he wasn’t going to admit to knowing little things about them like names anyway- was starting to get exasperated over Kipo’s inability to stay in “stealth-mode”.

“I don’t remember inviting you over here, burrow girl?” Jamack called out before Kipo had gotten to the edge of the pond, without turning to look at her in case she would interpret _that_ as an invitation.

“You don’t own the water, I can be here if I want,” she replied with a pout in her voice, and he couldn’t exactly argue with that so he just humphed and kept looking out at the pink clouds over the trees on the opposite bank. “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that Wolf caught dinner, if you want any.”

“I don’t want your human food,” he snapped.

“I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing up here anymore. Also, it’s an isopod like the size of a Timbercat so there’s plenty for you if you change your mind,” she said, snapping back at him. Jamack could hear her turn away to head back to the group which had camped in among the orange trees, but then she paused. He heard her drumming her fingers against the guitar she’d found before they’d had to flee the city.

She’d been wearing it and holding it tight against her torso the whole day, gripping that golden clover guitar pick in her hand too. Jamack had overheard the short bug and the third human say something about Kipo’s father in connection with the guitar pick and music, so he figured the instrument was something to cling to to keep her going, like hope. He looked down at his suit, the buttons on his jacket now torn off so it wouldn’t even close properly, but he had refused to look for any other clothes before they fled. He needed his suit. Maybe he could understand needing a guitar, too. He turned to look at Kipo just as she was turning back to face him, and he saw that she had tears starting up behind her eyes. This girl was always so emotional, it was exhausting. But she looked pretty exhausted, too.

“Come on, you can sit on that rock, if you insist,” he said, facing the pond again and putting on a tone of mild annoyance that he knew she would see right through, because she always did. She sniffled behind him and was wiping her eyes as she came and plopped herself down on the rock to his right, but she was smiling again at least. It might be irritating, but at least when she was smiling Jamack knew they weren’t in too much trouble. She unlaced her shoes and slipped them off with her socks so that she could put her feet in the water, which was cooling fast in the spring evening. She looked over at him and he tried to ignore the way she was analyzing him with those eyes that sometimes turned into cat-like slits and could see better through the dark than even he could.

“Why don’t you put your feet in? You’re a frog, you should like the water,” she said quizzically.

“I’m a _Mod Frog_ ,” he snapped back, “water is for tadpoles, we don’t play in it as adults.”

She paused for a moment thinking and then asked, “Are you a Mod Frog now? Like… are all frog mutes Mod Frogs by default? I thought they kicked you out? Shouldn’t you be able to do what you want now?” Hearing that come from her, even without a malicious intent, stung worse than any Dubstep Bee sting. Of course it was true, being a _frog_ and being a _Mod Frog_ weren’t the same thing. He’d been lucky enough to be a frog born into the Mod Frogs, but now he’d ruined it all and he was just a frog. He’d had a society, a life plan, an organization, a family-well, never really a family, not like he’d always wanted but would never admit to wanting, but it was the closest he’d ever had and ever would have now. Now he was alone. Just a frog.

“What I am is none of your business. And what are you? Not a human, not a mute, nothing. Why don’t _you_ do what _you_ want?” he mocked, spitting the question back at her and glaring over, trying to look as intimidating as he’d been when first hunting her. The kid looked down, frowning at her guitar and squeezing the pick so tight her knuckles started to go white. She kicked at the water, causing ripples to spread out over what had been a mostly still pond until then.

She mumbled something that Jamack couldn’t quite understand, and against his better judgement, he told her to speak up and repeat herself if she was going to say something. She jumped to her feet in the cool pond, soaking her pants up to the knee and glared up at him.

“I’m trying to do what I want to do, but everything keeps getting in my way!” she yelled at him, guitar swinging in front of her and fists balled up at her sides. “I was going about my life just fine until I got swept out to the surface because some crazy monkey wants to mind control all my people and then I finally start to get things going to find my dad and you keep getting in the way and messing everything up for me and my friends and mutes keep trying to eat me or pretend to give me my mom back or catch me and give me to the crazy monkey and then this weird mute stuff keeps happening to me and I can’t even be with my dad long enough for him to explain it to me because the crazy monkey blows up our new home and takes my dad from me again and now I’m out in the middle of nowhere stuck with you and no other way to get back to my dad and save him than you and your dumb dragonfly!”

Jamack was used to Kipo never shutting up but that was still a lot to take in at once, and she’d never _yelled_ at him for so long before and she was starting to wave her fists around, so for a split second Jamack was taken aback. But then he got angry too. She was blaming _him_ for all of this? How dare she put this on him! It wasn’t his fault her life was so messed up, but it sure was _her_ fault that _his_ life had been ruined.

“It’s not my fault your life sucks now, if you’re blaming anyone, blame Scarlemagne or yourself or your precious _daddy_ , but sure as h-” but before he could finish his retort she had rushed forwards and pushed him backwards off the log and into the pond. Water splashed up all around him, it wasn’t deep enough for him to be submerged but he was thoroughly soaked now, and _cold_.

“What was that?!” he screamed, voice going high with the chill of the water and still too stunned to push himself up and to his feet yet.

“I’m doing what I want,” she retorted, sticking her tongue out at him as she climbed up onto the log that he had been sitting on.

“You little brat! You’re gonna pay for that!” he yelled, opening his mouth to shoot her with his tongue and knock her back off the log. He’d always been the best at fighting and getting around the city with just his tongue as a weapon, he had better aim and agility than most of the Mod Frogs who relied on flashy weapons. In his early years he’d never been able to get a weapon, all the other froglets beating him out for them before he could get there. So he’d made do with what he had, namely himself, and it had been a much more successful plan than anyone had expected.

Until now. Somehow, faster than he could track even with his frog eyes that were specifically adapted to tracking fast movement, Kipo had caught his tongue in a now furry and spotted fist. She seemed surprised by this herself, as they both looked at her hand, which was starting to grip his tongue painfully tight.

“W-wah thith yuuu thoo?” he tried to say around his tongue which was still sticking out. He’d seen her in this furry form before, but it had never happened so quickly or over something as small as him just trying to knock her off balance.

“I don’t know! I can’t really control it! It just happens!” she said, starting to panic, which just made her squeeze his tongue tighter, and something was starting to stab into it, maybe her claws, but with the surprise wearing off it was starting to really hurt.

“Leth go!” he tried to shout, and she released her hand abruptly so that his tongue slapped back into his mouth like a rubber band. Whatever had been stabbing his tongue came with it into his mouth and he started to cough and sputter before he finally spat the golden clover guitar pick out with such force it arced into the sky and down into the middle of the pond.

“No! Dad’s guitar pick! That was his special one! It was all I had of him,” Kipo cried, grabbing at her hair and staring out at the ripples coming from where the pick had sunk in. She pulled off her guitar and set it down on the log, starting to slosh through the water towards the deeper reaches of the pond. Jamack had a moment where he wanted to watch her struggle to find it, to wade through the water and discover the pond was a lot deeper than she initially thought, to get her clothes just as soaked as his, to discover that her jaguar eyes might see well in the dark, but were just as useless underwater as her human lungs. He wanted to see her wet and miserable and defeated and lose something special. It would serve her right, he told himself.

“Hey kid, wait, you can’t find it yourself,” he shouted after her, springing to his feet and following after her. Kipo stopped and turned to look at him, she was already almost waist deep in the pond and the wet look was back in her eyes. “My clothes are already wet and _I_ can breathe underwater, you can’t,” he added, taking off his jacket and handing it to her when he came to where she was standing. It was easier to swim without a jacket, especially one so torn up already that it would catch on every branch and rock in the pond.

“You don’t have to-“ Kipo started, but before she could finish Jamack had jumped and dived into the deeper center of the pond, about where he’d seen the guitar pick fall. He didn’t need her to try to talk him out of doing something nice when he was already fighting himself over being here with these kids in the first place.

Adult Mod Frogs didn’t get in the water for fun, at least not when anyone could see them. For work it was different, a lot of their territory was made up of waterways and walking through a stream or swimming into his office was just practical. But no one talked about how good it felt to have water against their skin, how much better the fabric of their suits moved on their skin when it was wet, how right it felt to have the water within reach at all times. It had been years since Jamack had taken a real swim in a pond, fully submerged, unafraid of being spotted by someone who would mock him or catch him or kill him. He could stay under for about fifteen minutes at a time, longer if he wasn’t swimming hard, so he let himself have a few minutes just to enjoy the feeling of the underwater world. The algae were soft under his fingers, the cool water putting a nice pressure on his skin, and when he flipped over, he could see the peach evening sky refracting on the water surface in the most wonderful patterns.

If he lived through all of this, a possibility getting slighter by the day now that he’d thrown his lot in against Scarlemagne, he wanted to find somewhere to live with a pond. Somewhere that he could swim and look at the sky and the flowers and be safe.

That was all Kipo and her friends wanted too, he thought. To be safe? None of them had ever really been safe before, not Kipo, not her friends, certainly not him, even if he had thought maybe the other Mod Frogs would give him some protection. But the world didn’t work that way. If he wanted to be safe, he’d have to fight for it, and find his own place.

Jamack twisted back around to look at the pond bottom at caught a flash of light coming from the rocks a few yards ahead of him. He swam forwards and down to grab the small golden clover, startling away some fish fry who were investigating the pretty light. He looked at the little thing in the filtered lavender-grey light of the pond, wiping a bit of mud off of it, and he wished he had a family to fight for, like Kipo did.

When he got back to the shore where Kipo was waiting he handed her the clover pick without looking her in the eye. Her arm was back to normal and she had hung his jacket over the back of the log away from the water to start it drying, which was more considerate than he would have been if their roles were reversed he supposed.

“Thank you so much, Jamack, that was impressive,” she said, smiling and rubbing the pick against her shirt to dry it off. Jamack hopped up onto the log and sat back to take his shoes and socks off so that they could start to dry faster. Kipo put her guitar back on and sat on the rock next to his log, putting her bare feet back in the water, and Jamack slipped his in too, he was already wet, he might as well let himself have the treat.

“Not really, I’m a M- frog, we can stay under for a long time. Amphibious, you know what that means?”

“Related to, living in, or suited to both land and water! We don’t have any amphibians underground though, honestly there aren’t that many vertebrates besides humans. Mostly just arthropods, and worms, lots of worms!” She smiled over at him, probably trying to get him to talk, he thought, but he didn’t want to. His head was still down in the pond, swaddled in water pressure and dimmed light, thinking about family. Kipo got quieter, looking out over the pond at the darkening sky and started to absentmindedly strum the guitar, then continued. “My dad wrote songs about the bugs. And about the rocks. We would sing them together a lot.”

“Frogs sing too,” Jamack said, catching himself off guard. He hadn’t planned to contribute. Kipo looked over at him, her eyes still human since it wasn’t fully night yet. He didn’t want to talk about this, he didn’t want to share about Mod Frog culture, he didn’t want to share what it had been like to grow up, just because Kipo was. Except he did, because maybe he would never get to experience it again. Maybe sharing his memories, all he had left of his old life, would be his only way to relive the parts of his world that he had loved, and maybe this time he could share his love for that world and not be shunned for it.

“Mostly as froglets, we would sing together, it was how you learned directions or rules or made allies or played games when you could. Adult Mod Frogs don’t sing much, I think other frogs do but there aren’t many around anymore. But Mod Frogs only sing when they’re dating. And…” he trailed off, looking down at her. She was looking up at him with genuine interest and _care_ and that was when it sank in for Jamack finally. Kipo was just a kid. Part-mute and causing the world to come down around them with all the trouble she could make, but she was just a child.

“And what, Jamack?” she asked, probing gently, he knew she would expect him to snap or withdraw at any moment. It was fair of her to expect it; it wasn’t as if part of him didn’t still want to just leave. _But she’s just a kid_ , said a quiet and growing part of him. _She needs your help_.

“Parents sing to their tadpoles. They don’t spend much time with froglets after they metamorphose, but before then they… they’ll sit on the lily pads and sing to them in the evenings. I used to hear the songs when I was growing up.” He’d never really thought he would sing those songs to tadpoles of his own, he didn’t think he was really the parenting type, but now that it seemed like he would never get to hear any frog songs at all, it made his heart tighten a little thinking about it. He stared down into the pond, turning asphalt gray with the light gone, and imagined himself sitting there on a warm spring evening singing to his children.

“If you ever want to sing your songs with us, I’d like to hear them,” Kipo said, and she did look like she would listen to him if he sang. She didn’t know what she was asking, of course, he told himself. Singing was much more personal for Mod Frogs than it was for humans, you didn’t just sing to anyone or where anyone could hear. Singing was too important and too vulnerable and too emotional to share with anyone who might use it against you, and that was almost everyone, wasn’t it? “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. I could always teach you the songs my dad sang to me, too, if you want to learn them.”

Jamack looked over at her, saw her eyes had now changed in the darkness, and gave her a small smile. Maybe the kid did know what singing would mean to him, especially if she was thinking about the songs she learned from her dad.

“You should head back to the camp so the intense one doesn’t get mad at you,” he said while jerking his head back towards the orange trees. He didn’t actually respond to what Kipo had said, but she didn’t seem to get hung up on it. She hopped off her rock and grabbed her shoes, splashing back to the dry grass.

“You should come too, you’ll dry off faster,” she said from behind him, but he waved her off and made a noncommittal statement about getting there sometime. He leaned back and looked up past the clouds at the stars that were starting to brighten in the sky. His feet were pleasantly cold in the water of the pond and when he swirled them gently water splashed against the log he sat on, the sound tingling in the back of his head. If he made it through all this alive, he’d find his own pond somewhere like this, he thought, and for the first time in a very long time he hummed a low sweet tune to the water and the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> I was trying to write something probably happier than this turned out to be, but I'm not sure I'm capable of writing happy Jamack, so this is about the best I can do for now.  
> This is mostly inspired by conversations with honeyhardcandy (https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/honeyhardcandy) on tumblr where we were talking about how singing would fit into Mod Frog culture, since frogs are known for their vocalizations and music is so important in the show, but we don't actually hear any music from them in the show and they seem to be a very strict society. Which led to the idea that a lot of typical frog behaviors (singing, spending time in water, etc) are frowned upon except in very specific situations or for froglets (so like it's seen as childish behavior for adults). But they're behaviors the frogs are really drawn to because theyre really natural for them, so basically they're all just miserable and repressed, Jamack especially because he is a sweet and sensitive little frog man with many Emotions about Things.


End file.
